Monday, November 26, 2012

Eat, prey, snark.

Then a scream, shrill and high, rent the shuddering sky,And they knew that some danger was near:The Beaver turned pale to the tip of its tail,And even the Butcher felt queer.

It’s all very fine and well reading Lewis Carroll’s Hunting of the Snark
in the comfort of your favorite overstuffed charpoy before a roaring
fire, an overstuffed tumbler of roaring brandy at your ready disposal,
perhaps even your faithful Assamese nautch girl parked at your slippered
feet. Oh yes, you feel quite cozy and secure, idly turning the pages,
chuckling wryly at some particularly droll anapaest, perhaps even
lingering upon a picture … perhaps even the very picture we see above …

Well, it’s a fair cop! Speaking for myself, the
proprietor of the above-mentioned assemblage of dots, squiggles and
lines, I can assure you that it means quite a good deal — to the Beaver
and the Butcher, the poor things!

Oh yes, you can cultivate all
the insouciance you like, go ahead — it probably suits you! Be a mocky
mocker and make light of their cheap second-hand Victorian hand-me-down
clothes and their penchant for overwrought music-hall histrionics!

Tell ‘em that it’s all in their head, tell ‘em that it’s just a cheap bit of sleight of hand
from some hopelessly fusty and uncool Victorian parlor game, that’s a
good start! You could also poke a stick in the eye of Mr. Carroll’s
scream-cum-shuddering-sky trope. Are not the honest, simple
fear-mongering kennings of Ye Olde English Nonsense Verse good enough
for Mister Carroll anymore? Good lord, man, leave the trisyllabic,
sibilant-ridden adjectives of doom to Paul Bowles and his ilk, eschew
all this shuddering and sheltering sky crosstalk before someone gets
hurt!

Yes, you could say all that and even more but at that very
moment, in an unexpected and stormy manner reminiscent of last season’s
cliffhanger installment of the Book of Genesis, the rightful owner of
the charpoy that you have parked yourself upon has appeared to reclaim
his rightful place! An instant later, your Assamese nautch girl and you are precipitiously ejected from the premises, shame-faced perhaps, feeling a bit pale and queer even, as you should be!

Perhaps
now you could favor us with a little scream, something redolent of a
frightened Snark Hunter caught cucumberless in the salad season? Please
try to make it as high and shrill as possible, this is your long overdue
Expulsion From Paradise … we must keep up appearances!